John P-e-e-l----

Their shrill trebles broke like a rocket on the topmost note, and there
was loud laughter.

Glory again! Always, always Glory!

Then the scales fell from his eyes and he saw himself as he was, a
self-deluded man and a cheat. The impulses that had prompted him to this
night's work had really centred in Glory. It had been Glory first and
Glory last, and his pity for Brother Paul and his fear for the fate of
Polly had been only a falsehood and pretence.

The night wind was still howling about the house. Its noise mingled with
the peal of the church bells, and together they seemed to utter the
voices of mocking fiends: Judas! Traitor! Fool! Fool! Traitor! Judas!

He covered his ears with his hands and his head fell into his breast.

X.

"The Little Turnstile,

"New Year's Eve.

"Hooraa! hooraa!

"Feeling like bottled yeast this evening and liable to go off, I thank my
stars I have three old babies at home to whom I am bound to tell
everything. So lizzen, lizzen for all! Know ye then, all men (and women)
by these presents that there is a gentleman in London who predicts
wonderful things for Glory. His name is Sefton, and I came to know him
through three ladies--I call them the Three Graces--whose acquaintance I
have made by coming to live here. He is only an old mushroom with a bald,
white head; and if I believed everything their ladyships say I should
conclude that he is one of those who never sin except twice a year, and
that is all the time before Christmas and all the time after it. But
their Graces belong to that saintly sisterhood who would take away the
devil's character if they needed it (they don't), and though the
mushroom's honour were as scarce as the middle cut in salmon, yet in
common loyalty Glory would have to believe in it.

"It is all about my voice. Hearing it by accident when I was humming
about the house like a blue-bottle, he asked me to let him hear it again
in a place where he could judge of it to more advantage. That turned out
to be a theatre--yes, indeed, a theatre--but it was the middle of the
morning, and nobody was there except ourselves and a couple of cleaners,
so Aunt Anna needn't be afraid. Yes, the chief of the orchestra was
present, and he sat before a piano on the edge of the maelstrom, in what
we should call the High Bailiff's pews--but they call them the
stalls--while the mushroom himself went back to the cavernous depths of
the body, which in a th